Chris Davis: I’m well. I can’t complain. It’s a little cold in Chicago, but I am not complaining, at all.

Jeff: This is my first time participating, thanks.

Chris Davis: Welcome.

Jeff: Am I on video, and audio, and all that?

Chris Davis: You’re on video and audio. Video [00:00:30] is optional, just so you know, but got your audio.

Jeff: All right. Can I share my screen with you, if that’s helpful?

Chris Davis: Absolutely.

Jeff: Okay. Well, let me describe … Let’s see, I wrote down my questions here. I have what I’m calling a resource archive, and it’s brief articles, not really a blog, more like some brief articles. I’ll be adding to it. It has an RSS feed, and so I’m connecting [00:01:00] it to a campaign. What I’d like to do is, when people subscribe, I’d like them to get all new alerts about all the new archive resources that I’m posting maybe every week, or every other week, or something. I think I understand how that works. I saw, in ActiveCampaign, there seems to be a distinction that I don’t fully understand between having an RSS trigger versus [inaudible 00:01:33]. [00:01:30] Do you have some insight on top of the help material that I already read?

Chris Davis: Right. Here, let me … Hold on one second. I got to hardwire in the strength of my connection real quick. All right. You’re essentially talking about the RSS trigger with respect to [00:02:00] the RSS module within a campaign, right?

Jeff: Well, that may be where I’m a little confused, I guess, yeah. When I start up a campaign, there’s an … I can certainly show you on my screen, if that’s helpful.

Chris Davis: Here, I can pull up a campaign for you. I’ll create a new one and call it Jeff, just so we can keep track of everything.

Jeff: All right.

Chris Davis: In here, you go to the [00:02:30] builder, and we’ll just pick any of them. It doesn’t matter. Right here is where you’re saying, the RSS, right, this one?

Jeff: Right. Now, that’s an RSS feed. There’s another way of setting up a campaign so that it actually triggers off an RSS. I think what you’re doing there is you’re putting an RSS feed into the campaign …

Chris Davis: Right. [crosstalk 00:02:59].

Jeff: … but [00:03:00] what I’ve found is pretty powerful. I wasn’t aware of this when I signed up with ActiveCampaign, but I like this, because your blog or your … In my case, they’re forum pages. I guess there are a lot of pages you can have RSS feeds associated with, and I think you can even use Zapier for creating RSS feeds, or … I don’t know, there’s ways of …

Chris Davis: Right. Yeah.

Jeff: What this is nice for is that, when you have stuff that’s changing, [00:03:30] you’re adding to over time, you can have it piped into your emails that go out to your list.

Chris Davis: Yes.

Jeff: I guess one way is to sort of embed the RSS feed into the campaign, as you did the first time, and then another way is to say, “Well, we’re actually going to use it as a trigger.” I think the first way, you don’t get the benefit of the constant … Well, I’m totally clear on-

Chris Davis: Yeah. It’s not pulling the URL, right? [00:04:00] The first way, this is sent out essentially manually, or you could have it set up to where it’s scheduled, but it pulls from the RSS feed in the actual email, whereas the other way, where we select RSS feed as the campaign type, now, we’ll build out the email. We could use the RSS feed, or it could be a basic email, but every time that URL is updated, this email is going to trigger.

Jeff: Okay. [00:04:30] I think I get that now.

Chris Davis: You see what I’m saying? Because if we go to next, then it should … I think here is where it should ask me all of my information. Oh, of course, I’ve got to put a RSS. Okay, so it asks me here, which, you know what? Yeah. Yeah, which is right. Let me pull one in for you. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s going to work. Automation.com/ [00:05:00] feed. I think that will work. Let’s see. All right. There we go. Perfect. Then, it’ll pull it in, and of course, you can modify it. This campaign is going to be triggered every time the RSS is updated.

Jeff: Yeah.

Chris Davis: But I’ll be honest with you, Jeff. I found an easier way to do this.

Jeff: Oh, okay.

Chris Davis: It is with using an automation, and here’s why. [00:05:30] Let me put this in here. Here’s why I prefer to use an automation for an RSS triggered email. Let me just delete that real quick. That looks decent. Hit next. Here’s the exact reason why. When we’re done with this, it’ll give me my summary, all right? Here’s my summary. It’s going to send to this list every time the RSS … See, here it is, new post, and I can check every day. I can check every hour, [00:06:00] week, month, right?

Jeff: Yeah.

Chris Davis: I can set all of that criteria here, and then, I’ll hit send now, and it’ll send to a bunch of nobodies. The sending process will start here. Now, watch this, Jeff. This is always going to check and go out, but I have no visual way to see unless I go down to the type, right here. This is my only way of knowing that this is going to be ongoing.

Chris Davis: It makes me nervous, whereas if I go into automation, it’s the same thing. It’s literally the same thing, as far as the options, right?

Jeff: Okay.

Chris Davis: Here, and for my … Oh, look at that. We’ve updated. Ah, nice. If I do this RSS-based, see look. It’s the same options right here, but at least now I have an automation [00:07:00] that I can see, and I can name it accordingly and understand what’s happening. If I do the same thing … You’ll have a little more flexibility, too, in the automation, right? I’m going to check every day at 3:00 a.m., because I normally send communication 8:00 a.m. and beyond. Look at this. I can say it needs to be more than one thing updated or just one. I’ll just choose one, for now.

Then, I can [00:07:30] create a segment of people, whereas when we were sending the campaign, you can create a segment, of course. These are prebuilt segments, or you can create on the fly, but I can essentially say custom fields, and do something like if … I don’t know, if they’ve downloaded my ebook, right? Now, everybody that’s downloaded my ebook, when this specific feed changes, it’s going to check it every [00:08:00] day at 3:00 a.m. When that happens, they’ll get this email. Now, here’s where things do change, Jeff. When I set up this email, it does not have to pull in the RSS feed. This can be an email, like a standalone campaign, or it could use the RSS block.

Jeff: Actually, you can have multiple steps in the automation, so your first … Okay, so it can be RSS- [00:08:30] based. That’s interesting. You could have other conditions in there and sprinkle other stuff into the sequence.

Chris Davis: Right.

Jeff: Okay, so you’re saying it’s more flexible, and you don’t lose anything. Then, it ends up in a … You prefer the automation dashboard to keep track of what’s going on, because you find campaigns get buried.

Chris Davis: Right, because I can see … Right. Right.

Jeff: Okay.

Chris Davis: In a real-world situation, maybe I have certain areas [00:09:00] of my website where people can subscribe to. One specifically for ActiveCampaign is getting updates, right? There’s a process that you can subscribe to, and every time the platform is being updated, or even kind of like a status, it goes out, right? Being that as it may, I could have a static version here. This is always at the top, right? Here is the latest status regarding [00:09:30] our service, right? Then, I could pull the RSS feed in there, right? Then, every time we update the status, they’ll get this, or I could have it wait and [crosstalk 00:09:44].

Jeff: Yeah. What I didn’t even appreciate about this is that you could use the RSS as a trigger, but then it could be some other content entirely, right?

Chris Davis: Right.

Jeff: It’s like when this happens, fire off something else. [00:10:00] Yeah.

Chris Davis: Mm-hmm (affirmative), exactly.

Jeff: That’s very interesting.

Chris Davis: It opens it up, and honestly, Jeff, now that you’ve said that, I have to admit, I never even thought about it at that depth, but you’re absolutely right. Oh, you got my mind going now on use cases. But yeah, you can use an updated blog post or an updated post on your website as a trigger to send out either communication related to it or [00:10:30] something else. Yeah, you have that flexibility.

Jeff: Yeah.

Chris Davis: If we get just a level more technical, my feed URL here doesn’t even have to be the same as the trigger.

Jeff: Oh, right. Right. Yeah.

Chris Davis: We’ve got some layers here. I don’t want to lose everybody in the woods, but yeah [crosstalk 00:10:53].

Jeff: No, that makes perfect sense. Going back for a second to my original question, because we’ve gone pretty deep here, [00:11:00] the issue I originally had was all right, so if you just do a campaign that includes RSS, it can be … Yeah, so we still have the distinction between … You could do an automation that, in the automation, has RSS feeds as steps … It’s pulling in stuff from different … You could have like five different steps and five different RSS feeds coming into an automation, but that’s [00:11:30] different from the trigger being, “Hey, when an RSS feed is updated, that’s going to fire either a campaign or an automation,” and you’re saying preferentially an automation.

Chris Davis: Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. All right.

Chris Davis: The big difference is, the trigger RSS revolves around an event, right? The RSS within a campaign revolves around content, right?

Jeff: Yeah. I like that. Okay.

Chris Davis: [00:12:00] That’s the two major differences between them.

Jeff: Okay. Then, if I could layer on one more question, this one has to do with linking automations.

Chris Davis: Sure.

Jeff: What I’m going to do, as I add to this archive, when somebody subscribes, they’ll get added to the trigger, and they’ll get new updates.

Chris Davis: There you go.

Jeff: But I might as well also send them, drip [00:12:30] them, the old content, because they might not look at the archive on my website, but they might just like getting … These are evergreen kind of resources for them.

Chris Davis: Sure. Sure.

Jeff: In order to do that, what I think I’m going to do is I’m going to keep a trailing record in an automation, and I was advised, I think by one of your tech support people, not to just keep adding to an automation. Right now, I have 15 resources, so there’s [00:13:00] 15 articles. I put 15 steps in an automation. Then, the advice I got was don’t just add 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 forever. Just keep the automations kind of lean.

Chris Davis: Okay.

Jeff: There isn’t a theoretical limit, I don’t think.

Chris Davis: No, no theoretical limit.

Jeff: But somebody was saying, it’s just better practice to split them. I was thinking, “All right, maybe I split them into batches of 15.” [00:13:30] Then, I can probably … I haven’t looked into this much. Maybe you can just tell me. I can probably link them. Automation one is you get the first 15, and then let’s link … When that’s done, let’s exit that and go to automation two, and you’ll get the next 15. Is that my understanding?

Chris Davis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You could do that.

Jeff: All right.

Chris Davis: Let’s treat this as 15 emails on my screen.

Jeff: Yeah.

Chris Davis: You would [00:14:00] essentially start an automation, and then you would select the next one. That’s how you do it functionally …

Jeff: Okay, cool.

Chris Davis: … and it would be your next one. Oh, look at that. They’ve even updated this, all kind of goodies here. All right.

Jeff: What’s that?

Chris Davis: It used to just be kind of like a … It didn’t used to pop up beautiful like this.

Jeff: Oh, okay.

Chris Davis: I like it. It’s a little animation. But Jeff, here’s what I would recommend. If you look at your content, if [00:14:30] there’s any way you could group it, like if the first 10 were about a specific topic, then I would have an automation that was specific to that, right? Then, that’s how I would group them, instead of arbitrarily selecting 10 or 15, because again, that can kind of get confusing later on in life and be like, “Okay, why did I split …” you know?

Jeff: I was just going to do it chronologically. I was going to have, okay, the first 15, and then 16 through 30, because I’m adding, [00:15:00] over time …

Chris Davis: So here’s the deal with this. How about this, Jeff? How frequently are you sending it?

Jeff: Well, I’m just getting started, so I don’t know. I’m shooting for every two weeks, to begin with, and it might go to weekly, you know? It could evolve over time.

Chris Davis: All right, so if it’s every two weeks, in six months, you’ll send out 12.

Jeff: Yeah.

Chris Davis: I could see you doing it two ways. I could see you splitting it up, the first half of the year, second half of the year type. You could group them by quarters, [00:15:30] right? But just some means of grouping will help you, instead of an arbitrary number.

Jeff: Okay, and just to be clear, this red automation here, like 168 or whatever, that’s something that I’ve created separately, in a separate interface, so it’s just getting referenced here, right? It’s not-

Chris Davis: There you go.

Jeff: Okay.

Chris Davis: Just to complete it, if I go here to automations and do a new automation, and for this one … For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to do it, but [00:16:00] we’re just going to act like there’s a lot of emails in here, okay? I’m just going to do one email, one, all right? Then, I’ll hit save and exit. Let me name this real quick. All right, it’s there. Now, if I go back here, let me hit refresh. What it would essentially look like is, instead of [00:16:30] automation 168, I would be able to see … Oh, it’s alphabetical. E-M-G Jeff, Jeff Drip, see that?

Jeff: Yeah.

Chris Davis: Then, hit save. After this email, they’re going to enter this automation. Then, that automation is now going to start them at email one, so on and so forth.

Jeff: Awesome. Okay. Yeah, I like that. I like that. That’s very good. All right. Hey, thanks a lot. This is going to be available as a recorded … Like I can review it [00:17:00] later?

Chris Davis: Yes. It’ll be available at activecampaign.com/learn/officehours. I’m going to send it directly to you.

Jeff: Oh no, that’s great. I’ve got it. Thank you. I noticed somebody, there was a comment on the … You can trigger, I believe, in WordPress, there’s a lot of ways that … Somebody asked, does a comment on a blog post trigger the RSS event? Yeah, [00:17:30] I’ve seen that when I’ve been searching the web. I’ve seen that, at least WordPress, has new posts and comments can have their own RSS feeds.

Chris Davis: Yes.

Jeff: I know that a forum, which I’m using in a WordPress kind of setup, has an RSS feed. It’s pretty flexible. I’ve been pretty surprised at how many things [crosstalk 00:17:52].

Chris Davis: Jeff, Jeff and Mark, you two are opening up the spectrum here, because I will admit, I didn’t think about using the comments [00:18:00] RSS feed as a trigger. Hmm, I have to think about this now, even in a forum, right?

Jeff: Yeah.

Chris Davis: Especially if you’re using bbPress, which is a integrated forum software for WordPress. Most definitely subscribe to the forum feed when a new topic is created or a reply.

Jeff: Yeah.

Chris Davis: Wow.

Jeff: Yeah, topic and comment, and I think [00:18:30] the original question was about blog, but I think that should be similar.

Chris Davis: Yeah, because it’s really any feed, right?

Jeff: Yeah.

Chris Davis: Blog is kind of like the standard, but it could be any feed, yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. Then, I remember seeing articles from Zap on how you could also create your own RSS feeds, I believe, from pages, you know? It looks pretty …

Chris Davis: Technical.

Jeff: … flexible. Well, it looks pretty flexible, right?

Chris Davis: Yeah.

Jeff: I mean, if you have some kind [00:19:00] of use case that you need that kind of triggering, probably RSS is a good thing to look at, especially now that we’ve seen how it works with ActiveCampaign.

Chris Davis: Yeah. I’m going to play with this, Jeff. I’m going to play with it. I’m going to think of some use cases, and we’ll continue to evolve this idea, because I think there’s something there.

Jeff: Where can I follow you to follow that, your playing with it? Are you going to play with it … Are you going to write anything, post anything?

Chris Davis: Once it’s complete, I’ll 100% create a [00:19:30] guide on it, but these office hours, I’ll always report back on Tuesday. I’ll let you know if I find anything next Friday. It’s just something I’ll tinker with and start thinking of use cases. I’ll ask internally, like, “Hey, have you guys ever thought about this?” until we really have some strong use cases and can wrap our head around it.

Jeff: Yeah. Awesome. Thanks a lot, Chris, appreciate it.

Chris Davis: Yeah. Great meeting you, Jeff. Thank you.

Jeff: Yeah. You, too. I’ll stay on the line. Yeah.

Chris Davis: Yeah.

Jeff: Okay.

Chris Davis: Yeah. [00:20:00] I’ll just move you back to an attendee.

Jeff: Yeah, exactly. All right. Thank you.

Chris Davis: All right. Great. That question, oh, I love that question, because it really does … RSS, I didn’t realize, is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much there. Now, Jeff has got my mind going. I’ll be on the train. I’ll be, this weekend, watching TV, and something’s going to click. I’m going to be like, “Oh my gosh.” Then, I’ll run and test it, and yes, of course, I will report back, everybody, so we can all learn together.

[00:20:30] All right. Hello, Andrea. Okay. Andrea, I see you have asked your questions here, so I’m going to answer them. I’m going to answer them right here, and then after Andrea, Devon. Hey, Devon. Welcome back. Welcome back. Jon, great. Jon, welcome. Welcome. Brett, look, it’s like a reunion here. Everybody who’s new, you’re part of the reunion. This is what we do on Fridays. All right. [00:21:00] Let me get down to business here. We’ve got some good questions. I haven’t read them all, but I just know they’re good. I have a feeling, it just feels like that Friday. Jeff started it off on a right note.

All right. Andrea, or Andrea, let me know if you prefer one or the other. Andrea, I am wondering … Let me just make sure I didn’t lose anything here. All right. Well, it’s up to you, Andrea. You can come to audio, if you want to. “[inaudible 00:21:28] sign up form [00:21:30] on my website, would it have to be double opt-in?” How about this, Andrea? I’ll go as far as I can answering them via text, but at any point, if you want to jump in and kind of clarify it, raise your hand, and I’ll add you immediately. All right. “I am wondering how ActiveCampaign integrates with Squarespace, not the technical part, but more one, if I put an active signup form on my website, does it have to be double opt-in, and two, will they fill out the form [00:22:00] on my site and then be redirected somewhere else for registration and payment for the class?” All right. Okay, Brett, I see you. Yeah. We’ll get there, too.

Let me answer these in sequence. I think I can handle these two as our … Let me move this question down. All right. Just so you know, Andrea, in ActiveCampaign, double opt-in is not required, and it exists at the form level. [00:22:30] If I load up any form, you’ll see, right here, I’ll have form action, okay? If you click on the gear next to form action, this is where you can turn double opt-in on or off, all right? You can place this form anywhere in Squarespace using the embedded code, and if you turn this off, double opt-in will be off, okay? Then, just a quick follow up for that, in the [00:23:00] same vein, even though it’s on your Squarespace website, if you go into here, and instead of Show Thank You, you hit Open URL, you can then redirect them to your payment page or whatever the next page is for you, okay? That’s the first two. Both of those settings take place in the form options of every form type, okay? Just feel free to use the chat and let me know if anything [00:23:30] is unclear. That’s the first one.

Then, Andrea has another question here. How and what accounting software and payment processing software, for example Stripe, integrates best with ActiveCampaign? That’s a good question. It’s a good question. I’m going to say this: you can [00:24:00] integrate ActiveCampaign with pretty much any payment processor. What’s more important than the payment processor is moreso your flow, the flow of tools. Andrea, Mark has something, if you’re not already at it. “The AC site tracking code, you may want to add that, so you can use page visits for automations.” Great. Great recommendation, Mark. Thank you. Mark always has my back. Good one, Mark.

Here, as far as accounting software, [00:24:30] yeah, it’s going to depend on your flow. A lot of them are going to integrate via Zapier, if you’re familiar with this. I’m not familiar with a lot of accounting software, but I know you’ve got FreshBooks, if you would call that accounting software. Oh, look at this. They’ve organized it. Do they have accounting? They don’t. Oh, finance, here we go. See, they have Xero, [00:25:00] some other stuff I don’t know, QuickBooks, right? This will probably be the easiest way to get started. What kind of accounting software are you using, just so I know?

Okay, I want the minimum moving of the customer, familiar, I’m not sure. Yeah, let’s jump on audio, Andrew, [00:25:30] just to make sure I’m getting everything that you need. Okay, looking at using FreshBooks or Dabsado. Oh, that’s a new one. I’ve not heard of Dabsado. I know FreshBooks integrates via Zapier. Did I spell it wrong, Dabs-ado? [00:26:00] I don’t know. I think it’s Dubsado. Oh, oh. Oh, B-A, sorry. I’ll get it. They should really think about redoing this name, because it’s hard … Oh, it may not be American. That’s why, which is fine. Hmm, I’m not [00:26:30] finding it. Dubsado.

Ah, here it is. Thank you, Katrina. Katrina for the rescue. All right. Streamline your business, I’ve not seen this one. Okay, but either way, Andrea, I would go here, because if you’re using FreshBooks, watch this. Freshdesk, FreshBooks Classic, [00:27:00] FreshBooks New, whatever that means, it will tell you … With a new client, you can trigger this Zap when there’s a new client, when there’s a new payment, or when there’s a new invoice. Think of it like this: if you use Zapier to identify when a payment is made, then you’re open to whatever payment processors FreshBooks uses, okay? [00:27:30] Okay.

Andrea wants to use the easiest flow with the least amount of pages. Yep. Yep. That’s exactly how you should be thinking about it. Now, I don’t know how to figure this out, but FreshBook integrates with PayPal, Stripe, Shopify. Now, FreshBooks becomes how you take your payments, and then when a payment is made, you can have that [00:28:00] send information to ActiveCampaign, you see that? If I choose a trigger here and say New Payment, and you can see on the left, whenever a new payment is made, I can go into ActiveCampaign now and update create or update a contact. That would be the easiest way.

Andrea says, “Will the payment history Zap to their contact in Active?” Yup. Exactly. Exactly. What I would recommend, [00:28:30] though, is I would recommend doing this: when they make a payment, you can add to, like multiple actions. One of the actions I would choose is just create and update the contact, Chris Davis ActiveCampaign account, and that’s essentially going to pull all of your custom fields, all right? But if you want to keep track of all payment history … See, these are all of [00:29:00] my custom fields. I would add another action in ActiveCampaign that says Add a Contact Note, all right? This, when you add the contact note, it’s going to be from the payment, of course, we would get that there, the list and then the note, payment, has paid [00:29:30] invoice, all right? Then, what that would do is, on the contact record, every time they pay a invoice, you’ll see it over here, and you’ll be able to see exactly when it happened. That’s how you would get the payment history. That’s how you would use the Zap to add the payment history into ActiveCampaign, all right?

Then, I think you had one more. Yeah. Okay. [00:30:00] Can we address this on the side, how would Active … Yeah. I can address this fairly quickly, because Andrea said she’s thinking about moving from MailChimp. Let me just show you one thing. Automations for one is the biggest difference. MailChimp does not have automations in this sense. They have ways to automate the sending of email, [00:30:30] but you cannot automate beyond email, okay? When you’re looking at MailChimp versus ActiveCampaign, the first thing you’re going to notice is, when you go into the automations, I mean, we can send a email. This is where MailChimp begins and ends, just with sending email, but we can do more than that, send SMSs, you can split up, do If/Else. Now, I’ll give them credit. They do have a automation workflow builder, I think, but it all revolves around sending [00:31:00] an email, okay?

ActiveCampaign, when you’re talking about a contact, you have all of these, right? Split, what is this? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, split automation. You know, you can send people to other automations. If you’ve ever been in MailChimp and used their automation workflow, it’s very linear. There’s no way for people to jump to other actions or whatnot. Then, even more important is there’s no CRM. There’s no CRM, so when you’re talking about [00:31:30] managing contacts, there’s no way to set up stages, and progress them, and move people throughout the stages of a pipeline and really manage that contact relationship, because … This is not just limited to MailChimp. This is any email marketing platform. Any email marketing platform is focused on lists, not contacts. ActiveCampaign is focused on contacts, so everything in ActiveCampaign is really for the contact to have a personalized [00:32:00] experience instead of trying to personalize an entire list. That’s why it’s very hard to have scaled personalization with email marketing, because it’s hard to scale communicating to a list, right? If you’re going to scale personalization, it has to be to the contact. All right?

Andrea, stay on. Let me answer a few more of these questions, and I will come right back to you, I promise, all right? Hopefully, that helped. [00:32:30] Devon, welcome back, Devon. Let me do this. All right. Just make sure I did … Yeah. Devon, all right. “I have my automation in Active. It shows the contact and queue for the wait of five minutes, but then, it’s not sending the email after five minutes. I can’t figure out why it’s not sending the email.” Okay.

First off, Devon, just [00:33:00] double check, just to dot our Is and cross our Ts, to make sure there’s not something wrong with your account. Make sure you send it at create … There it is, Create a Support Ticket, just to make sure, and then, “How do I set my emails not to send on weekends in my automation?” Ooh, that’s a good one, Devon. Yeah. If you have them queued for five minutes, and after five minutes, they’re not going … Now, granted, you could give or [00:33:30] take based on the polling. It could take up to five minutes, just depending on all of the action, the activity that’s going on in your account.

Katrina said Dubsado is pretty popular with wedding professionals. Oh, okay. All right, great. Great. Mark says, “Chris, I’m having issues with the wait states not working, been with the dev for days now.” You know what? On top of that, Mark, I will say, our webhooks went down earlier this week, [00:34:00] so maybe that’s related. Then, everybody, as I’m looking at this … Not here, but when we go to a new automation, I see we updated our start trigger model and a few things, so there are some updates to the application, and I think all of these issues may be related, right? I think some of the updates may have caused some other areas to act a little funky, so please make sure [00:34:30] that you submit it as a support ticket. Mark, I know you said you’ve been working with the devs. If you want to CC me on that ticket, Mark, just so I can have some visibility to it, and ping on myself, feel free to do that, but that is something worth mentioning here, everybody, and that’s nice. You can discard the automation, nice.

Okay, so that will be question one. Devon, just make sure, just put a ticket out. You can CC me on that [00:35:00] ticket, but it shouldn’t take more than five minutes for that five minute wait, give or take five minutes. It could take up to 10 minutes, is what I’m saying, for the five minute trigger to go, but ideally, you would see that … I’ve seen these five minute wait, or the wait states, tend to act fairly quickly. It’s moreso goals that could take a little bit, like a minute or two to register. But the wait state should be moreso instantaneous. Okay, [00:35:30] thank you. Thank you, Mark. I got your ticket number. I appreciate that.

Then, how do I set my emails not to send on weekends in my automations? What you’re going to do with that one, Devon, is you’re going to use a condition builder. The nice thing about it is, you only have to do this once, right? We’re not going to have a trigger. The nice thing about it is, let’s say you go in here, and you wait. Nope, [00:36:00] I want it to wait until specific conditions are met. Essentially, what I’m saying is the … Time, okay. The current day of the week is not Sunday, or the date and time, current day of the week is not Saturday. Where is it? Oh, look at that. What? [00:36:30] See? See, okay. I’ve got to go to product, everybody. There’s all kind of little things that have been added, that I was not aware, so we could make this even easier. Devon, I’m glad you asked this, because we’re all on a learning expedition now.

Look at that, weekend. The current day of the week is not a weekend, or I like to use positive logic, everybody. I just broke my own rule, always use positive logic in the segment builder. I’m sorry. Please erase what you just saw me do. If I could go back on this video, I would cut [00:37:00] that out. Wait until the current day of the week is a weekday, okay? Hit save. Now, somebody can come into this automation, Devon, and look at that. They’ll wait here until it’s a weekday.

Mark said, “I’m jealous.” Listen, Mark, I think we’re all getting a preview. Let me just say this: I’ve heard the product team [00:37:30] talking about a new update for a little bit, and even if you look on the Facebook page, a couple of people have been like, “Hey, when’s the new updates?” But there’s one major one I can’t talk about, but these little ones that just really improve the workflow and things like this, they’re just sneaking them in there. Since I have an ActiveCampaign account attached to my internal email, you all are seeing what should probably be hitting you within a week. If it’s in my account, it’s normally seven days or less out, okay?

[00:38:00] Let me see this, Devon, weekday. Brett, I’m going to explain that in a minute. This is how you would do it, Devon. Put a wait state right before your email. Now, you’ll ensure that it does not send on the weekends. Thank you. Oh, Devon. I can’t thank you enough for asking that question, because I promise you, I have never seen weekend or weekday. If any of you have seen that, let me know. [00:38:30] Maybe it’s just me that’s late, but I have not seen that.

In the same vein, Brett, let me answer this followup question that you had. It’s something that, for all of you that don’t know, every time we hire someone, a class of them or a group of them start on the same day, and I do a portion of their onboarding, where I walk through the application and just give them some history of the company and everything. [00:39:00] I always tell them to use positive logic. Here’s why. Here’s why, Brett. Watch this. Watch what happens when I use negative logic, like I was going to do, okay? Wait until certain conditions are met, and I say date and time, current day of the week is not a weekday. Now, watch what happens to your brain. Just prepare your brain, I’m warning you. I meant to do a If/Else. I’m sorry. I felt like I did [00:39:30] a If/Else, but I must have just went right back to the wait. Yeah. Conditions, date and time, current day of the week is not a weekend.

Watch what happens to your brain. Look at what I’m saying when I use negative logic. The current day of the week is not weekend, so no to is not is actually yes. Now, yes means no, [00:40:00] and no means yes. How confusing is that, right? But you all saw me, just by default, we always think about what we don’t want to happen. If we don’t catch ourselves, we’ll put the not like, “Okay, I do not want this to happen,” but we’re going to give you a yes and no, and it inverts your yes and no. Brett said, “Neo-type stuff there.”

It’s mind-boggling, and guess what? What if you had nested If/ [00:40:30] Elses? What if I went here, oh my goodness. I would never do this. I’m about to hurt my … I can’t promise I will ever be the same after showing you this. This may fry me for the day. What if I do is not a weekday here? This is like a riddle, okay? If it’s not a weekend, that means yeah, so this means it’s a weekday, and then, I say it’s not a weekday means … Yes [00:41:00] means a weekend. Wow. Anyways, this is why we don’t, okay?

Now, what if I just flip it, right? Is. Look how much easier that is, if I flip it. Is it a weekend? Yes. Yes, it’s a weekend. No. No, it’s not. Yeah. Yeah. Mark says, “If you use positive, then often, the most active path goes down the no path versus yes.” Yeah. Frank [00:41:30] said, “Please stop.” This is a lesson in negative logic, everybody. Never use it. Never use it, at all. Always have a positive … Let your yes be a true yes and your no be a true no. Your life will be easier when you’re building out your automations with it.

Again, thank you, Devon. I’m excited about that, is weekday. I am really excited about that. All right. Jon, thanks for hanging in there with us. [00:42:00] I’m coming to you, Jon. Jon had a question from earlier, and I am coming to it. Paste and Match Styling. Andrea, one thing I wanted to point you to, as well, Andrea, make sure you sign up for your one-on-one. Everybody gets a one-on-one. You get a one-on-one, and you get a one-on-one. Everybody gets one. If you go to activecampaign.com/training, I’m going to send this link … I’m putting it in the … [00:42:30] One-on-one training. I believe so. Brett asked if we get more than one one-on-one. I believe if you’re on a Plus plan, you do. I know for a fact, if you’re on a Plus plan, you do. I’m not sure for the trials and light plans. Andrea, make sure you at least sign up for your one-on-one, and you can talk more specifically about your use case with MailChimp, your payment processor, and everything. [00:43:00] Yeah.

Hey, [Tia 00:43:03]. Oh, Tia’s here to save me. None on trials and none for light plans. Okay. Andrea, I would recommend to get your one-on-one, get on the Plus plan. You’ll have somebody that you can talk to weekly. You always have office hours, but if you’re in the process of transitioning, you’ll want to make sure that you can bounce ideas off somebody consistently. Yeah.

All right, Jon, first- [00:43:30] timer here. Welcome. “Love to understand more about attribution and tracking site visitors.” All right. “I’m getting in a right pickle. Getting clarity may be a Friday evening thing.” No, no, no, no. That’s fine. Honestly, attribution is one of our harder topics to define, and site tracking, we can never cover that enough, all right? Let me just make sure [inaudible 00:43:57].

Okay. Andrea, I put [00:44:00] the link in the chat. Let me know if you didn’t get it. If not, I can send it to you. Oh, Jon from the UK. Jon, great place of living out there. The UK and Australia are two places that I told myself I need to visit. I’m more prone to visit the UK, because you all don’t have the creatures and life-threatening insects that Australia has, although, every time I say that, all my Australian [00:44:30] friends laugh at me and tell me to come out, anyway. Then, they send me pictures of gigantic spiders and all kind of things. My chances of going to the UK are a lot higher.

Let me talk about site tracking, really quick, everybody. I think, Jeff, you had a … Yeah. Jeff says, “I don’t understand site …” Okay. I get two-for-one here, Jeff and Jon. “How does ActiveCampaign which of my users/emails is surfing the site that I designate [00:45:00] with that …” Here, let me … Jeff, I’m going to add yours to Jon’s. Let’s talk about site tracking, everybody. Let me see, Paste and Match Style. All right, there we go. We’re going to talk about site tracking real quick. All right.

First off, you set up site tracking by going to your settings, right here. If you go to My Settings, and then go to Tracking, [00:45:30] you’ll see you can turn it on. When you turn it on, you’ll also see that you can add as many domains as you would like to, okay? Okay. I can add a domain here. That’s step one. The next step is to put this tracking code in the footer of your website, all right? That’s the most technical part of this all. You need access to the back end of your website, the dashboard or your hosting platform, and to be able to put this tracking script on [00:46:00] it. If you’re using WordPress, more than likely the theme that you’re using comes with this ability. If not, you may have to consult your web developer. Once this tracking code … The tracking code doesn’t change for your account. It’s the same for your account, so you can put the same tracking code on multiple websites, but the website does have to be listed.

At that point, in fact, these are … If you ask me, what’s the most important step somebody should take when they sign up, when they get started with ActiveCampaign, [00:46:30] site tracking is one of them. When I walk people through the onboarding, I always say, “Hey, put your site tracking on first.” Here’s the reason why. Just like Jeff was asking, how do we know which users are surfing on the site? Is it done via cookie? The answer is yes. The answer is yes. When they fill out an ActiveCampaign form … There are some caveats, and I don’t want [00:47:00] to … Using the nice learn site. Sidetracking, I just want to … There it is. Look at how easy … Oh my gosh. Our dev team really outdid themselves with this one, making stuff easy to find. I’m putting this in the chat, site tracking. There are some caveats to site tracking. I’ll go over them real quickly.

The best way to ensure that site tracking is activated is for someone to [00:47:30] fill out an ActiveCampaign form. If you add them to your ActiveCampaign account through importing or through API, importing, they definitely will not have site tracking. API, you’ve got a 50/50% chance that they will have site tracking enabled, because that’s all on the integration. Whoever you’re integrating with, it’s on them to make sure they’re submitting the site tracking cookie. If you really want to ensure that people are getting tracked the minute they’re added to your account, [00:48:00] use an ActiveCampaign form. The guide that I submitted in the chat goes into more detail, why that is, but that’s how that cookie works, Jeff. They’ll opt-in, and then they’re cookied. Then, that tracking code is now tied to their browser, all right? Even if they put in another email address, the browser session, or the cookie browser will be the same for both emails, as long as they’re using the same [00:48:30] computer.

Now, any website that is here, that they visit on that browser, will show up. What happens if they visit a website on the cellphone? Well, it’s not going to track it until what? Until they click a link. If they’re checking email on their cellphone, and they click a link from an email, guess what? That now is going to register as a secondary device for that cookie. [00:49:00] Now, you’ll be able to track them on the phone and on the desktop. The two ways to make sure that you know that somebody is getting tracked is for them to fill out an ActiveCampaign form or click a link within an email that goes to one of these domains. You do those two things, and you’ll be able to track them on whichever device they took that action on, okay?

That’s how site tracking [00:49:30] works, and what makes it powerful is that we can now go into an automation, and we can set up an … I’m going to show you two powerful ways of using site tracking, okay? Look at this. Web Page has been visited, and I can select all of those, Jeff and Jon, and I’ll say Contact. I am going to put a asterisk, because maybe they can get there from clicking on something that adds more to the URL and runs once [inaudible 00:50:00] [00:50:00] start, right? Now, any time someone visits my contact page, I can send an internal notification to myself, or I can do any action, right? I can personalize this message and say something like … Okay? Put that in there. Now, this is going to fire off every time … Site [00:50:30] tracking contact page. Every time somebody visits that contact page, or the first time they visit the contact page, I’ll get a notification, right? That’s one way, where site tracking is powerful, because now, I can start an automation, right?

I see your question. I’m going to get to them real quick. Or what can we do? We can go here. Oh, what’s this [inaudible 00:50:56]? Oh, yeah, yeah. If I go, “Wait, look [00:51:00] at this,” I can wait until what, what condition? I can go to site, I think, right here, site has visited, URL, and like I say, Jeffandjon.com/pricing, right? I can also set it up in an automation to say, “Hey, wait until they’ve indicated some behavior on my website before they can progress, right? Extremely [00:51:30] powerful. These are just two basic but powerful … If you just start thinking, “I could also do branching.” If they start an automation, I could say, “Hey, have they ever visited my contact page?” If no, I can send them an email about me. “Hey, here’s some information about me and my business.” If they have visited the contact page, then I could do otherwise, right? I could build that out, but I don’t want to, okay? Because I see some questions.

I’m [00:52:00] adding people via Zap. Yes, all right. Jeff, oh … Right, Katrina? That’s how you can sync up multiple devices, yeah. Let me see, Mark, I don’t want to miss … Okay. “Re:tracking code, if the viewer has strict privacy software, it will not track. AC has no control over that. It is a very small number, for the most …” Mark, right on the money. If they have their browser like … If somebody has some firewall software, or … I mean, they’ve [00:52:30] got their stuff locked down, you won’t be able to track them.

I used to work for the government, or I used to work for a corporation that did work for the government, and we had very strict firewalls at work. Any email that came in, all of the tracking was stripped from it. In that case, that would meet what you’re saying, Mark. That would meet that condition. I had some very strict privacy software that prevented that, but yeah, like you said, it’s a small number of people, but it’s worth mentioning, because you may [00:53:00] do some B2B marketing, and it’s important to understand that if they’re working for IBM or bigger corporations, they may be firewalling and stripping your tracking, all right?

Jeff says, “I’m adding people via Zap. When they purchase my WordPress membership site, will they be tracked?” Here’s the thing. If they’re being added via Zap, more than likely, they’re not being tracked, but watch the saving grace here, Jeff. This is another condition. If your WordPress membership [00:53:30] software integrates directly with ActiveCampaign … I did a series on this. I get to do some [pubbing 00:53:40] here. If you go to the podcast, I did a membership series, here it is. Episode 32 through 35 is a membership series, and these platforms, like ActiveMember360, Memberium, WP Fusion, AccessAlly, all four of these … I said [00:54:00] three, but all four of these platforms, when you log in, guess what happens, Jeff? The moment they log in, the ActiveCampaign tracking code is attached to their browser, okay? Depending on your membership site, you could start the tracking once they log in, if you’re using one of these four … There may be other platforms out there that do it. These are the four that I know of, firsthand, okay?

Jeff says he’s on Rainmaker, so there’s no … No. There’s no direct integration there, [00:54:30] so yeah, Jeff, you’re going to have to get them to fill out a form or click a link in an email. If you send them like a welcome email, and it’s like, “Here are your login credentials, and there’s a login,” and they click the link to login, that will activate site tracking, okay? You may be good, in that sense. All right.

Then, Brett says, “However, will those be counted as two different visits for the tracking code?” What you’ll see is they’ll be counted as [00:55:00] visits, but it’ll all be combined on the contact record, right? I hope Phil has some site tracking. I don’t think he does, because I don’t have site tracking on much of anything in this account. Anyways, what you would see … Oh, look at that. I do. You see that? It shows that I visited this page. It’s not specifying the device, okay? If I visited the page on [00:55:30] my mobile phone or on my desktop, as long as the tracking is there, it’s going to show up on that contact record, okay? But it won’t be two different users. It will show on that one, because remember, it’s going to take … The cookie is connected to both your browser and your email. That’s the match that ActiveCampaign is doing, okay? That’s how we’re matching it with the unique identifier, which is the email, and then the cookie in the browser, [00:56:00] all right?

Here, Mark has some insight, everybody. “Insight re:tracking, regarding tracking, send an SMS message with a link on opt-in or soon after to tag their mobile for tracking.” Send an SMS message with a link … Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a good one. Mark, that’s really good, right? What Mark is saying is, if you want to get their mobile device tagged [00:56:30] or get the cookie on their mobile device, you can send a confirmation to their email … I mean, as an SMS, right? When they click the SMS link … Man, I’m going to have to update that. God, I didn’t even think about SMS. Thank you for that, Mark. When you click the SMS link, then it will register the device, because it’s a link click from a message sent from within ActiveCampaign. When they click that SMS link, it will then cookie the mobile browser so you can track their … [00:57:00] Which is another reason to use SMS. Mark, Mark for the win. That was a really good one, man. I have to admit, I didn’t even think about that one, so good one there.

Jon says, “I’m also wondering about social tracking, as well. Anyone done this or know about it? Looking for a holistic view on online activity.” That’s a good one. Now, we’ve run out of time for attribution. That is where attribution begins, [00:57:30] and when it finishes, hopefully, it will give you that holistic view. That’s the goal, honestly Jon, for attribution. Let me see here. All right, Jeff, let me answer these last three questions. I’m going a little over, everybody.

Megan, I missed it. I missed it. [inaudible 00:57:52] on WordPress I have. I’m sorry I missed your email, Megan. I’ll check afterwards, and I’ll follow up with you personally. [00:58:00] After this call, is there any way you can send me to a client who uses ActiveForms on Squarespace? Yeah. I would ask the community, Andrea. I would definitely ask in the community. Somebody will raise their hand, because I’ve seen a few support tickets on it. That’s the fastest way. Megan, I’ll follow up with you regarding this.

Then, Jeff says, “Can we request that site tracking be made to work with imports, as well, just not from their email? Not sure why tracking would only work on …” Well, here’s the thing. Jeff, it gets [00:58:30] a little hazy when we try to mandate site tracking, because remember, if you go to websites … I think this is one. You start getting into privacy laws. Normally, NBA.com is a good one. As you all can probably tell, I’m a basketball fan. You see right here where it says Upcoming Announcement … Oh, I know what’s a good one. I think CNN does this. Just real quick, [00:59:00] because we’re … It’s not there yet. It’s not there anymore. CNN used to have, and NBA.com, used to have it to where it had that announcement. You all have seen it. It says this site uses cookies and tracking, and then you have to click consent, say, “Okay. It’s okay to track me.”

Jeff, I’m not saying you are trying to do anything wrong. I’m just letting you know, it’s borderline illegal to automatically start tracking people without [00:59:30] them taking an action that says, “You can track me.” When they submit a form or a click a link, that’s them taking an action that is activating the tracking, whereas if you were to import them, they’re essentially … They haven’t given you permission. The same goes for email. It’s not like they’ve given you permission to start tracking them, so that can get real gray really quickly, so just be careful of that one, Jeff.

Brett says, ” [01:00:00] So how do I know who’s been on the site? Is there a dashboard?” Okay. You could create a segment, Brett. Brett, there’s a couple ways, right? If I set up this automation, look at this. Anybody who’s visited this contact page, I can, at any point, at any point, Brett … This is actually, I have a few automations in my personal account set up like this, where I have a automation dedicated to important pages, because look what you can do, Brett. [01:00:30] You can click View Contacts, and it will show every contact right here, who’s visited that contact page. Pricing page is always a good one, right? Maybe you’ve got a package page or about page. Those are pages that are good to set up single automations that, when someone visits … The thing about it is, you don’t even have to have any action. It’s just when they visit, think of the automation as a bucket, right? When they visit here, they’ll enter, [01:01:00] and you’ll be able to view everybody who’s visited that website, right? Pretty good.

Then, yeah, Jon says, “SMS link is very clever.” Yeah. Thanks, Mark. “Would you have a mobile number straight away?” You’d have to collect it, Jon. You’d definitely have to collect it, maybe at the opt-in, or afterwards, or whatnot. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Mark, of course, he’s got it. “Thanks so much for your help.” Yeah. You’re very welcome, Jon. [01:01:30] Ghostery, Jon, and watch who’s actually tracking you. Ooh, Brett says check out Ghostery. I don’t even know what that is. That sounds scary. Makes the web cleaner, faster, and safer, browser extension. I’ll have to look at those. Spooky. You missed Halloween on that one, but I’m going to check that one out. “Got it. The legality, anyone could import anything.” Yeah. Hey, Jeff. Thanks for being on. Have a good day. Then, [inaudible 01:02:00]. [01:02:00] Yeah.

All right. “Chris, can we alert ourselves every time someone visits a page?” Yeah. Yeah. “I’ve got certain pages that I want to know, to pick up …” Oh, that’s perfect. That’s perfect, Brett. Yeah. My automation is gone, but I would definitely use this exact automation, this one right here. Oh, Brett, look, I have one for you. I would definitely use this one, and use [01:02:30] your page as the start trigger. You can set it up for once or every time, and then use this, notify someone. That somebody can be yourself. He says [inaudible 01:02:42]. Yeah, and that person can be yourself.

Now, when someone visits your page, you’ll get this in your email, right here. Their name just visited the contact page, and then you can click this. It’ll pull up their contact information. It’ll pull up their contact record in ActiveCampaign, [01:03:00] or if you wanted to, like you said, wanted to call them, look at this. Phone number, assuming you’re collecting the phone number, and then I could just do that. See that? Then, right on your phone, you could say, “Oh, someone visited my contact page.” You could hit click on their phone number, and call them right from there. Brett says, “Bam. Nice.

All right. Great. Ooh, wow. This was a [01:03:30] jam-packed office hours, everybody. I apologize for going five minutes over. I try to respect you all’s time and keep you no longer than an hour, so my apologies for that. I hope the extra six minutes was well worth it. This is office hours. We do it every Friday at 1:00 p.m., every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Thank you all for attending. Yup. Brett, go ahead, get to work. Have a great weekend. Andrea, thank you. Thank everybody. Jon, everybody, Jeff, everybody. Tia, [01:04:00] thanks for jumping in and helping me, Mark, always, Katrina. I can just go down the line, Devon. I’d be here all day, but thank you all. Have a great weekend.

Hopefully, I see you all next week, Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. I’m going to try to come up with some use cases for what we talked about today. If I have some, I’ll report. If not, I’ll just keep working until we do. Until then, Katrina, here’s my cue, automate responsibly, my friends. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you on the next office hours.

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